Alcuéscar - Aldea del Cano 16km

I had packed my mochila the night before so when I woke up, I dressed quickly, and left about 0620 whilst it was still dark. At the monastery gate I met Jürgen, a German peregrino and so we walked together as far as Aldea del Cano where I planned to stay. I had stayed there in 2018, I remember it was just Ken and I and about 5000 lizards.

The walk was very pleasant, Jürgen seemed to be a very nice guy and he kept a good pace and we only stopped a couple of times for a brief rest and refreshments. Aldea del Cano is slightly off the camino so we said our goodbyes on the path. He was going on to Valdesalor, I wished him well, there were not many beds available in Valdesalor and I know a lot of the peregrinos had been reserving beds in advance. However, there was a municipal albergue and they don't reserve beds, it's a first-come first-served basis so he would probably be ok. I never met him again, so I will never know.

I was the first peregrino to arrive at the albergue, so I went and got the key from the Las Vegas bar next door.

The albergue was exactly as I remembered it, which is to say basic, I think Gerard Kelly's description of it in the guidebook as 'beautiful' was probably intended to be humorous. Since I was first to arrive I picked the room with one set of bunk beds, as my father always said, if you're not first, you're last. I did note however that there were two backpacks in the main room, but I was definitely the first there.

Two ladies, Odile from France and Colombe from Canada arrived, they were friends who met on a previous camino, and they were having their backpacks delivered daily to each albergue and walking only with a small daypack. They were going as far a Cáceres and then abandoning their camino as they were finding the heat too much to cope with. I got on well with them and was sorry to say goodbye to them the next day.

Shortly after that an American who had been at Alcuéscar arrived. He had been a Police officer, then a lawyer and was now a security consultant for a well-known music magazine. In the wake of yet another mass shooting in the USA he was of the view that the way to deal with bad guys with guns was to give more good guys more guns. We tried and failed to get him to understand how alien that viewpoint was to Europeans. He was very sweary and furious that the washing machine cycle was taking so long, if he'd had a gun, that machine would be dead. I only saw him once again at the bus station in Cáceres.

I felt that I was really beginning to get into a camino rhythm and was slowly beginning to enjoy the experience, but I was also conscious that the heat was building and that there was a long way to go. I spent some time planning my route ahead, noting that there were a few problems for the peregrinos over the next few days. One of the main problems is that the albergue at the Embalse de Alcántara is closed leaving a 35 km gap between Casar de Cáceres and Cañaveral with nothing in between, no shops, no cafes, nothing but road. I was thinking of getting a bus.

Two Italian guys arrived, they were full of energy and quite hilarious. They scoffed at the idea of getting a bus and said we weren't true peregrinos - they were the camino guys that would walk 40-50 km a day quite happily.
I am not one of those guys.Read more